


Stalemate

by Dusty_Forgotten



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 08:12:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1891722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dusty_Forgotten/pseuds/Dusty_Forgotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Really bad karma courier being a dick to raiders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stalemate

A flurry of bullets from a semi-automatic, met with a high-powered plasma projectile. The raider girl is standing behind a Pulowski preservation shelter, while Archer has taken cover behind the wreckage of a car. He fires blindly, and she’s stopped coming out of cover now that she’s caught on. He can’t crouch anymore, not on a broken leg.

But she doesn’t know that.

“All your friends are dead!” he calls, a noncommittal blast of plasma to keep her back.

“They weren’t my friends!” she yells back. The crack in her voice betrays her fear. “Just some fucks I ran with!”

“Still,” he continues, “they died easily enough. As will you.”

There’s a medical brace in his duffel, but he’s not about to set a bone in the middle of a firefight.

“Oh yeah? Then why aren’t I dead yet!?”

Archer smiles to himself. “I like to play with my food.” He glances cautiously through the stripped cabin of the car. A flurry of bullets comes through, and Archer fires in her general direction. She’s back behind cover.

They’re stuck. The nearest buildings are too far for either of them to consider sprinting to, and fifty feet of empty space between them. Coming out of cover is suicide.

She lets up, reloads; Archer checks the battery level, and swaps it. There are about a dozen discarded, collected in the pothole slightly downhill.

“Those batteries are pretty rare, right? How many a’ those you got, anyway?”

“Hundreds.” Archer responds- and he’s not exaggerating. “Hundreds more than you have bullets. Try to wait it out, and I still win.”

His hearing is good enough that he catches the “ _Fuck_ ” muttered under her breath.

“Give up?”

“I’d rather go down fighting, thanks.”

“As you wish. I have enough food to last a week.” He smiles at the tense silence that ensues. She doesn’t have any on her.

Her assault rifle’s old, not very good condition, wide spread. He’s wearing combat armor. He could rush her.

If he could walk. “Raider armor isn’t very practical, you know- especially the women’s. So many vulnerable organs...” he says, quietly pulling his duffel bag in front of him, fishing out the medical bag.

“And you _still_ miss them!”

“Patience, my dear. I am nothing, if not patient.” He puts the belt between his teeth and does it before he has time to chicken out, pulls hard on his calf, moves the lower half back into alignment, and he can hear her, sprinting, _terrified_ , loud even over the white noise from all the blood in his ears as he devotes all his energy into not screaming around the leather in his mouth. He can’t risk moving to aim at her, jostling the newly set bone, but she’s sprinting back to the preservation shelter, so he secures the brace, pretending he’s not about to be shot so he doesn’t rush. He’s pulling on the last strap through the buckle when he hears something clatter quietly, innocently next to him. One of the pigs he dropped earlier must have been carrying grenades, and she knew, and she knew he was busy, and he should have fucking known-! He lunges, grabs it, and hurls it back, because everyone’s too scared of having live explosives ticking away in their hand to bother counting before they throw. Archer isn’t.

He expected her to jump out from her cover and hit the floor, but as he looks down the barrel of his plasma rifle, she isn’t there. He almost thinks she died in the blast, but she didn’t scream, and he’s not seeing bits, either. He leans on the rusted car frame to lift himself to his feet (foot, really, stuck hopping awkwardly until he can find a fucking crutch or something to get back to Megaton), and hobbles to the shelter, rifle at the ready.

She’s nowhere to be seen.

The door’s closed.

“The moment you come out, I shoot you.”

“The moment I come out, _I_ shoot _you_.” she responds. “So we’re stuck again.”

“Not quite.” Archer corrects, smiling to himself. He fishes a Nuka-grenade and roll of duck tape out of his bag. He tapes the can to the siding of the preservation shelter, and the string to to the door.

“...What are you doing?” she asks, and it’s already too late.

“I’m really quite glad I found these schematics. All you need is a bottle of Nuka-cola Quantum and a few household cleaning products, and you have a grenade almost as powerful as a mini-nuke.” He adds a few more strips of tape for good measure. “There’s the blast, fire, and heavy radiation- oh, I love these things. Now, you have two options. Starve to death, or die by soda.”

“W-wait! What!?” No response. She bangs on the metal. “What the fuck are you talking about!?”

Archer’s already out of the blast radius.

 


End file.
